What are the Largest Family-Owned Businesses In The US? Many families work together for a common goal, such as public welfare, a business, or others. You can check out this list where we have out together the Largest Family-Owned Businesses In The US. These families earn about $1.5 trillion annually combined. This is about 40% of the 2016 US budget! One family owned business’s revenue is more than the budget of many country’s governments! There are many who think that so much wealth in the hands of few people could be dangerous. There have also been studied that attempted to link the various economic factors to family ownership.
The study stated at family-controlled companies generate about 47% higher return on equity when compared to a public company. This is due to the fact that being in a family brings stability and keeps the goals of the company sharp and focused. The US and European-based family businesses get lower returns than their counterparts. However, there is no denying that investing in a family-owned firm is advantageous. In this list, we have ranked the largest family owned businesses in the world on the basis of their revenue for the year 2016. The figures stated here were obtained from S&P Capital IQ and Forbes. Revenue is one of the measurements that can be used to compare the private and public companies. It is much harder to compare the companies on the basis of market capitalization and the result would not be very accurate either. We have defined a family-owned company as one where at least one-third of the firm’s ownership is controlled by the family. Credit Suisse is a research company which consists a firm to be family owned when one-fifth of the shares are controlled by the family. We have considered the one-third threshold as 30% vote is enough to dominate at a shareholders meeting. This control is seen as typical in family run companies.
Wal-Mart Stores Inc, Berkshire Hathaway Inc., and Twenty-First Century Fox Inc are a few of the Largest Family-Owned Businesses In The US that are listed here. Wal-Mart Stores earned about $485.9 billion the previous year. The Walton Family holds about 50.9% of the shares of this company. Warren Buffett’s company, Berkshire Hathaway Inc., is owned by the Buffett family who holds 40% share of it. Rupert Murdoch and his family hold about 39.4% of the Twenty-First Century Fox Inc. Take a look at the others in this list.
